One of the biggest stories in the coin industry at the moment is the discovery of 79,640 American Silver Eagle Supplemental dollars struck at the Philadelphia Mint in2015. The discovery of these coins was only made as a result of “Coin World” magazine and the coin grading firm NGC, filing a Freedom of Information Act Lawsuit against the United States Mint. The United States Mint was forced to reveal their existence!

The United States Mint was forced to reveal the existence of 79,640 coins struck at Philadelphia, the lowest bullion strike coins in the 31 year history of the series. Many dealers and collectors are comparing the 2015 (P) coins with the famous 1995 W Proof Silver Eagles that have a mintage of 30,125 coins and sell for $5,000 to 10,000 or higher in PR69 depending on the label and $40,000 to $80,000 in perfect PR70.

The United States Mint has sold out the entire mintage of bullion and proof strike coins each year since 1999 as millions of people are collecting and investing in Silver Eagles. There has been several times when the Mint had to suspend sales because it could not keep up with the demand. In 2009 the Mint actually cancelled the production of Silver Eagle Proof coins because enough high quality silver planchets (coin blanks), could not be sourced to strike the coins on.

To meet demand for Silver Eagles that are mass produced by the WestPoint Mint branch, the Mint retooled the San Francisco Mint branch and began issuing coins. These coins called Supplemental or Emergency dollars and were quickly snapped up by collectors. It has now been revealed that in 2015 a total of 79,640 Silver Eagles were produced by the Philadelphia Mint. Unlike Proof strike Silver Eagles that have a W for West Point, S for San Francisco or P for Philadelphia mintmark to show where they were minted. Bullion strike Silver Eagles have no mintmarks. They can only be identified through the packaging and serial numbers at the U.S. Mint. From a total of 108 million coins produced, the Freedom of Information Law Suit revealed that just 79,640 coins came from Philadelphia. They were identified through their 5 digit serial numbers that began with the number 5.